The start of a life changing experience

Working in a industry where much is expected had all kinds of interesting challenges to it. The first challenge initially was to get my head around what worked and what didn't in the way the product and concept was being promoted and received. The many answer I came up with was that is was an industry based on people and if we started there we would pretty much change whatever needed to change. Little did I know that the complexity of business relationships and personalities would play such a huge part in everything we did. For me this was an issue as is was one of the main reasons I had left employment and preferred to work on my own without all the politics. So here I was right back in the thick of it. It is only an issue really when things are not going well. My first lesson was to appreciate the dynamics between a promoter and speaker. Most of my previous background was working with huge conferences, seminars, events and meetings that were very much about the organisers and the "committee" and very little to do with the speakers. This was going to be a whole new area of skill set I didn't yet have. So here is the thing......the promoter is only truly in control of the costs of the events, production of the trainings and all the support services that go with it. The speaker and their business is entirely responsible for the sales element. It was the first time I was ever in a situation where your income is based on an external influence of which you have very little control. The next interesting factor was we only had one product. All our eggs were in one basic, the same can be said for the speaker. Now anyone knows in business this is very high risk strategy especially when you expand to other countries and your business gets bigger. Additionally going back to the whole people side of things, there were a number of changes that had to happen to make this venture work more pro-actively and progressively. It was always interesting for me to meet people who were not happy in their jobs but were unwilling to change it or do something about it, as they just didn't understand that is was about them changing and not expecting the change to be external. Never more so in a personal development environment. This meant there had to be a change of personnel which is never easy when you are just starting with a brand new team! One thing I knew though is the team had to grow and we had to focus on customer service, delivery and the events. We were nothing without our team, our speakers/trainer or our crew!